Gary Mortimer has a good idea: a DIY time trial contest, where you time your UAV flying autonomously over an agreed-upon course. You upload GPS track, time and, onboard video. Fastest time each month wins something cool that I'll donate (like a Funjet kit).
What kind of course would work best for this? For starters, how about this: a square, 400m on a side. Must complete three full circuits in fully autonomous mode. Carry an onboard GPS datalogger or datalog from your telemetry stream and upload the file (so people can see timestamps).
How does that sound?
(pic stolen from Gary's comment below)
Nothing mandatory fitted to the airframe methinks, I can't think the sort of people that manage to get an autopilot flying are the sort of people that would be so dishonest with results!!
The rules posted by Chris on the previous page should stand for Aug 2009, round one of the Drone GP!
It can be refined as time goes by, but a simple goal that changes is a good plan and way of testing your airframes. Eventually you might up with 12 exercises that could be flown at a meet.
Jorn,... great idea having a different track each month... kind of like a monthly UAV grand-prix, with points going towards rankings and ultimately season championship!!
I'm away from home at the moment, so if I order a FlyCamOne for this it will probably take a couple of weeks to recieve. I'm also working on my 2009 UAV Outback Challenge UAV, so this isn't so much of a priority for me, but I think its a really cool concept, and would love to perticipate.
Chris, FlyCamOne? EVERY SINGLE GRAM COUNTS!!! ;-) The professional method od defining wpt met is crossing the tangent line to the line connecting last and actual waypoint, but within reasonnable distance to wpt.
My proposal:50m hit condition.
This means it would be easier to calculate entry point and timing on the map when the first or the last leg are parallel to either lat or lon line.
Also X pattern is significantly different from ampersand pattern.
You can get telemetry from ArduPilot. Just capture the serial stream from your Xbee. As for video, you can use something as cheap and light as this. If you can't do the video for some reason, I think we'd settle for the GPS track.
And don't worry about the radius. This is just for fun. If you're close, we'll count it.
Comments
The rules posted by Chris on the previous page should stand for Aug 2009, round one of the Drone GP!
It can be refined as time goes by, but a simple goal that changes is a good plan and way of testing your airframes. Eventually you might up with 12 exercises that could be flown at a meet.
I'm away from home at the moment, so if I order a FlyCamOne for this it will probably take a couple of weeks to recieve. I'm also working on my 2009 UAV Outback Challenge UAV, so this isn't so much of a priority for me, but I think its a really cool concept, and would love to perticipate.
Chris, FlyCamOne? EVERY SINGLE GRAM COUNTS!!! ;-) The professional method od defining wpt met is crossing the tangent line to the line connecting last and actual waypoint, but within reasonnable distance to wpt.My proposal:50m hit condition.
This means it would be easier to calculate entry point and timing on the map when the first or the last leg are parallel to either lat or lon line.
Also X pattern is significantly different from ampersand pattern.
You can get telemetry from ArduPilot. Just capture the serial stream from your Xbee. As for video, you can use something as cheap and light as this. If you can't do the video for some reason, I think we'd settle for the GPS track.
And don't worry about the radius. This is just for fun. If you're close, we'll count it.
Is the requirement for an on-board camera mandatory? The plane I've got with me is tiny and I would have trouble doing that...
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
of 4 Next